IT is only three years since I visited the Bury area (we lived in Tottington during the war) and I remember seeing a special BT issue recording events from 1939 to 1945.

The trams of the 1940s formed in the centre of The Rock. We went to the Tech and art gallery, the Palais on Saturdays and, of course, Bury Market. I recall the slipper baths were on that side of town.

Birthday treats were tea at the Co-op and a ramble through the country to various tea room or egg farms. The fish and chips at the Co-op (the old building still exists) were part of our healthy diet as teenagers, along with a herb drink or ersatz ice cream at a popular little herb shop (which was destroyed on Christmas Eve 1944 when a landmine fell on the row of houses near St Anne's, Tottington).

Looking back is one of the pleasures (sometimes a painful one) of being three score years and 15. How hard it is to remember all the glorious, simple pleasures of being young, such as the adorned clogs we wore to work at Olive's Paper Mill. I learned to dance to the music of "Amapola", we did the rumba at Cadet dances at the Technical College and I starred in an Eisteddfod play week there with the Girls Training Corps. Our leader was a teacher living on Walshaw Road. Uniform was navy skirt and white blouse and a beret. We marched in town with the Air Force and Army Cadets: oh those bugles! We preferred Joe Loss.

We learned to spot any plane that flew over Manchester and I ran away to join the WAAF. I trained in Wilmslow in 1947 during the coldest winter ever recorded.

If anyone has any local memories, particularly of the Girls Training Corps, I would love to get a letter from them. My address is 22 Suffolk Street, Fremantle, Western Australia 6160 WA. I have lived in Australia for 40 years now, but have never forgotten my roots.

SHEILA WINIFRED

HUSBAND (nee Mooney).